


Where The Roses Won't Die

by M3zzaTh3M3z



Category: Widdershins (Webcomic)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family, Friendship, Gen, Home, Homesickness, Non-Chronological
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-05
Updated: 2019-06-05
Packaged: 2020-04-08 08:58:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,879
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19103893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/pseuds/M3zzaTh3M3z
Summary: ‘Home is where the heart is,’ well-intended, stupid people sometimes say.This worries Jack a little. Mirrors suggest he doesn’t exactly have a heart, not in the way they mean. Then again, he doesn’t exactly have a home either.





	Where The Roses Won't Die

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Holly by Hudson Taylor](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK3262br-I8)

“I suppose I’d better show you your rooms before we go,” the wizard - Ben, Mal’s pretty sure - says. All wizards are headaches, but this one’s a walking migraine. Mal flinches as he passes, though he knows the spikes of irritation can’t really hurt him. If he doesn’t calm down, Mal’s not sure he’ll even be able to see the damned buggerups with all that jumpy distraction. It certainly makes listening to him tricky.

His mind snags on one word though. “Rooms?”

Wizards are hard to read normally, and Mal doesn’t know Ben anywhere near well enough to figure out that mess, but he _thinks_ he looks embarrassed. “Oh, I didn’t realise you’d prefer to share. We don’t have a double bed but -”

Thankfully, Wolfe catches onto Ben’s meaning much quicker than Mal ever would, and cuts him off with a laugh. “No, we are nothing but friends. Separate rooms will do nicely, yes Mal?”

“Aye, gimme a break from yer snorin’,” Mal replies easily, which sets Wolfe bickering as they follow Ben up the stairs. It’s a familiar argument and Mal barely hears the words he says. Mostly he thinks how tired he is.

Opening the first door on the landing, Ben gestures for Mal to go in. The room is narrow, furnished with only a small bed and a wardrobe missing one door. No room to swing a kitten, let alone a full grown cat, but Mal doesn’t plan to do anything but crash in here anyway.

“This can be you,” Ben says. “Mr Wolfe can be down the hall. I’ll let you get settled in for a minute.”

The door shuts with a click, freezing Mal in place. His heart beats heavy, but he shakes himself out of it. He’s a grown man, for Christ’s sake (no matter how often Wolfe calls him childish.) Still, he quietly reopens the door. Ben and Wolfe, further down the landing, don’t notice.

Mal slips back inside and turns on the spot, taking in the blank walls and view of the city rooftops. After two turns, he stops. There’s nothing for him to do. Wolfe’s bag holds his only change of clothes and he’s nothing else to unpack.

Well, that suited him just fine. It wasn’t like they’d be here long.

 

“Are you going to be buying that?” Wolfe asks, peering over Mal’s shoulder.

Mal starts - he’d been absorbed by the fossil in his hand, to block the busy crowds of Lyme Regis out. They were only there because back in Plymouth some girl from there had told Wolfe all about the special harbour and beautiful countryside and blah blah blah. Probably something to do with that flirting stuff Wolfe had once tried to teach him. Though the girl had been left behind some weeks ago, Wolfe’s desire to see the place had not been. It wasn’t out of their way (not that they had a particular way) and Mal quite liked the beach, so he’d agreed. (It’s a good thing Wolfe asks for so little, he’s harder to refuse than Mal likes to admit.)

They probably shouldn’t have spent so long around Dartmoor though, because by the time they arrive it’s summer and the place is swarming with tourists. No wonder the girl left her hometown if it got overrun like that every year. (Mal and Wolfe never count themselves as tourists - they’re travellers, ta very much.) On the upside there are plenty of audience members to busk to, plenty of idiots to beat at cards and plenty of stalls selling pretty things to look at.

“Nah,” Mal says, though he doesn’t return it to the table either. On the edge of his vision the stall-keeper thrums with wary defensiveness, probably trying to signal five minutes was plenty of time to handle merchendise he didn’t intend to buy anyway. Ignoring him, Mal turns the fossil over in his hand again.

“It is beautiful,” Wolfe says. “What is it?”

“Special rock,” Mal replies, partly because he knows it’ll irritate the stall-keeper who’d given a long explanation of why it definitely wasn’t just a rock, and partly because most of it had gone over his head. He did remember one thing though. “Called an _an-no-mite._ ” He holds it up so Wolfe can see the tightly coiled spiral set into the rock. “They jus’ find ‘em like that.”

Wolfe gasps in delight, picking up one himself to examine. “Wonderful. Are you knowing how they are made?”

Tuning out the stall-keepers explanation, Mal brings the _an-no-mite_ to his nose. Near-constant smoking dulls his sense of smell, but there’s still a whiff of sea-salt and stone, though Wolfe insists rocks don’t actually have a smell. The spiralling side is polished smooth, but the reverse remains uneven rock. Rubbing his thumb over the spirals, the rough side digging into his palm, Mal closes his eyes and forgets the chaos around them.

“Wha’ colour is it?” he suddenly thinks to ask.

“Colour?” Wolfe gives an apologetic smile to the stall-keeper Mal must have interrupted, and turns his eyes to the fossil. “Ah, it has none. It is grey.”

Mal rolls his eyes. “I keep tellin’ ye, grey _is_ a colour.” What Wolfe probably means is the colour is of no importance, which makes a nice change.

Wolfe graciously decides not to press the point, presumably to spare everyone the hour of squabbling that could easily follow. Instead he smiles and inclines his head to the price board. “Are you sure you do not wish to buy it? It is reasonable, no? And I am sure we are having enough money, for once.”

For a second, he’s tempted. It looks pretty, it feels good in his hand, and it’s small enough to keep in his pocket. But it’s an ornament really, and those are meant to be left on display.

With a sigh, Mal tosses the _an-no-mite_ (he must remember the word) back onto the table. “Nah,” he says again. “Can’t be cartin’ rocks around all day. Yer enough work as is.”

 

“O’Malley!” Ben’s voice from the doorway stirs Mal from what’s not quite a nap because he’s staring at the ceiling, and he flicks his eyes over to show he’s heard. “I’ve told you before not to leave your door open like that, it blocks nearly the whole landing.”

Mal returns his eyes to the crack shaped kind of like a horse. Or a bird. “Don’t see th’ problem.” Then, because his lethargy sharpens into something spiteful, adds, “Yer little enough t’ squeeze past.”

Glaring, Ben very purposefully shuts the door. As his footsteps retreat, Mal half picks up his muttering about he wasn’t _that_ short and they’re all adults here, except only _one_ of them ever acts it. A twinge of guilt wakes in his chest, which pisses him off. (It’s probably the most he’s felt of anything all day.) Yeah, he knows he’s a bloody a nuisance, but he didn’t _ask_ to be here.

He forces himself to wait until there’s quiet before rolling off the bed and reopening the door, not just because he needs to, but because it’ll annoy Ben more. Maybe if he fucks up enough, Ben will hurry up and kick him out proper. Get it all over with.

 

They call it a Home but it’s nothing of the sort, it’s just rooms and beds and screaming children and yet, when Jack’s taken away and given to the scary lady surrounded with sludge, he still asks when he can go back.

 

Mal had vaguely realised he’d started sleeping better once he met Wolfe, but he doesn’t put it together until faced with a quiet, empty room for the night. Every night.

At some point he realises that, before Widdershins, he hadn’t slept alone for well over a year. Wolfe’s slept with a girl, or occasionally a young man, a handful of times since they’ve been together, but usually nights where Mal was up playing cards until dawn anyway.

Sleeping alone is too loud, even when all seems calm. True silence is rare, especially in a tumbledown house like this one. Which is fine, in theory. It’s not that the creaks and drips and rattles of the house are particularly noisy, it’s that they’re louder without Wolfe there. Mal hasn’t learn the rhythm of the house yet, he doesn’t know when the noises will be, and lying there alone, his mind sharpens back to wakefulness at every bump in the night.

They never stopped in one place long enough to get used to sleeping there before, but it didn’t matter. With Wolfe there Mal didn’t have to jerk awake at every sound. Even asleep he seemed to sense he was safe, whether on a train or the roadside or in a forest. They didn’t sleep together, or even always that close (unless it was bitter cold) but simply being nearby was enough. Unspoken, they knew they’d wake each other, protect each other, if anything went wrong.

It’s too loud, but it’s also too quiet, too still. They used to talk for hours, regularly declaring they were about to sleep before remembering one last point, until Mal’s eyes stung and his speech slurred and he’d drop off to the sound of Wolfe’s voice. And it’s not just the talking. Somehow, over three years, Mal got used to Wolfe’s breathing.

 

“C’mon, where’s it at?” Mal mutters as he rummages through the bottom drawer of Ben’s desk. The desk he’s been given strict instructions not to touch, at all, under any circumstances, ever, even by accident.

In his defence, he’s only raiding it after emptying the kitchen cupboards and drawers, Ben’s dresser and his bedside table. Contrary to what Ben might believe, Mal doesn’t actively compete for biggest fuck up in Widdershins, so he does feel a little bad about it. However, he feels worse that he’s exhausted every possible storage place in the house and still turned up empty handed.

Ben must keep it on his person, Mal realises, and fights down old panic at the thought. It’s fine. He’ll just wait for Ben to hang his coat by the door and -

“Oh gods, what have you done now?” Mal jerks upright, smacks his head on the desk edge, and finds Ben stood in the doorway, one hand against the frame. Then he takes in his desk, the drawers hanging open and contents scattered, and real anger flashes around his frame. “I told you not to touch that.”

Mal jumps to his feet and rushes him - intimidation isn’t his strong point but he’s got a few inches over the little wizard and Ben’s nervous of him anyway - only just holding back from grabbing Ben by the lapels. “Where’d ye put it?” he demands, louder than he’d meant. More panicked than he’d meant.

To his credit, Ben holds his stare even as he steps back. “Where’s what? Really, just because you can’t keep track of your own belongings -”

“Th’ key fer th’ room!”

“What room?”

“Th’ one I’m in!” Throwing his hands up, Mal spins around and paces back to the desk, kinda aware he’s working himself into what Wolfe calls ‘a state’ but not intending to calm down anytime soon. If that’s even a choice.

Ben follows him in and Mal notices his eyes roaming behind his glasses, probably already planning the tidy up and inevitable lecture. The anger runs over him in little flames, like a gas cooker on low (why was he so pissed anyway? Not like Mal was gonna read his diary) but something Mal tentatively identifies as curiosity dampens it down.

“Why do you need a key?”

“Jus’ do.”

“If you’re worried about your belongings, I’m always very careful to lock the front door. And the windows.”

Mal shakes his head. How to explain with flimsy words such a strong gut instinct? “Nah, ‘s not like that… It’s… if I’ve got th’ key, I’ve got it, see?” Ben’s confusion remains as thick as before. “Nobody else has it if I do.”

The fog lifts a little. “Yes,” Ben says slowly, which makes Mal worry about the ‘but’ he knows must follow. “But there is no key.”

“Eh?”

“Your room doesn’t lock.”

Mal runs upstairs to check, Ben on his heels shouting something about not leaving that mess, but Mal pays no mind. He’s too busy staring at the door. Ben’s right - there’s no keyhole.

“Huh.”

“I think there’s a bold on the inside?” Ben offers after a moment. His aura’s all jumbled up and Mal really can’t be arsed to figure it out right now, he already knows it’s because he’s being weird. He’s always weird though, it’s not the sort of thing he can help.

Mal peers around the door and Ben’s right again. “Huh,” he repeats. A room that only locks from the inside. The opposite of a prison. A fortress.

 

They spend a few nights at the Captain’s family’s farm while they’re sorting out somewhere to go. It’s unexpectedly kind, but Mal thinks there’s a little more to it too. Everyone’s still waiting to see if the danger is really past.

The family are worried and upset, but welcoming even to strangers in their home. And it’s unmistakably a home, every room lived in, moulded around the inhabitants, full of the type of clutter that only builds up over time but everyone knows how to navigate anyway. Stress bunches around everyone, but underneath Mal can tell they’re happy here. It’s very domestic, and utterly unfamiliar.

Two little girls live on the farm, with a third visiting. The Captain’s, and Harry’s nieces, Mal figures. They’re fascinated by him, watching between their fingers from behind furniture, curiosity bright and only tempered a little by caution. He’s not too used to children, with no idea of what to do except vague ideas about not smoking or swearing around them, and eating vegetables, and bedtime. And they’re meant to be scared of witches. When they’re not looking, he watches them back.

One of them, the very littlest, runs everywhere, all the time, bursting with so much excitement she could be half-buggerup. She’s running around the kitchen one evening, playing a game Mal’s unsure if he’s playing too but involves a lot of running in circles around him, when - _crash._ She smacks into her father and the plates he’s carrying smash on the stone floor.

Everything goes quiet, except for the blood roaring in Mal’s ears and the pounding of his heart. His eyes are glued to the father’s hand, waiting for it to rise, and faintly wonders if he’s close enough to pull the girl out the way in time.

And then the father crouches to her level. “What do we say about running in the kitchen?”

“Don’t do it,” she mumbles.

“Why not?”

“Dangerous.”

“That’s right.” He scoops her up, stepping over the shards of plate. “You go sit with your mum, there’s a good girl.”

Mal realises sound didn’t stop at all, it was just him, everyone else is still talking like nothing happened. He finally breathes out, still jittery, and gets the broom to sweep up the bits.

In the next room, the little girls keep running and playing until tea time.

 

Wolfe always carries dried lavender in his pockets. Keeping clean on the road mostly means of splashing water on their faces in the morning, or maybe swimming in a river or the sea when it’s warm, but Wolfe says it’s important to make an effort nevertheless. Also, women like it, which is apparently also important. Sometimes Wolfe offers some to Mal, but Mal prefers to leave that stuff to people who actually _want_ women to like them. So far he’s done very well at avoiding that, and it seems a shame to break a winning streak.

Most of the time, Mal forgets it’s there, but then he’d be curled up half-asleep under a tree, or in a boxcar, and the next thing he knew he’d have Wolfe’s coat draped over him. Sometimes Wolfe ruffles his hair after laying it over him, and Mal lies still and pretend to sleep, until he really does drift off, nestled in the smell of lavender.

 

Mal and Wolfe walk a lot, but they also Go On Walks a lot, which is completely different. One gets you places. The other finds you places. And things. Mal is good at finding things.

He doesn’t mean to collect it all. It’s just he sees an interesting stone and picks it up to have a better look, and then another stone or leaf or something catches his eye and he’s got to check that out too.

By the end of the walk he’ll have an armful of pebbles with holes in (”They’re lucky Wolfe, honest.”) and wild flowers he likes the smell of and any other little trinkets found along the way. Wolfe teases him about it, calling him _‘kleine Elster,’_ in fond enough tones Mal figures it’s probably not too bad an insult, whatever it means.

At the end of each walk Mal dumps his finds in a little pile at the side of the road and goes, “Happy now?” Wolfe protests he hadn’t meant to throw _everything_ away, and Mal says he doesn’t care anyway, but sometimes he picks the flowers back up so Wolfe has something to give to the girls in town. Flowers seem a silly gift to him, they wilt in a few days, but they’re usually back on the road by then anyway.

Mal isn’t one for looking back - it defeats the point of moving forward - but sometimes he lies under his blanket or Wolfe’s coat, gazing up at the stars, and imagines little roadside piles of interesting rocks and sticks and rusty jewellery, dotted all over Europe.

 

Wolfe fills his room quickly. First his clothes, his violin, his journal and a paperback he’d been reading on the train. More paperbacks follow the first, forming a neat line along the windowsill, then higgledy stacks at the end of his bed. Piles of violin scores too, though Mal doesn’t see the point. Wolfe knows music much better than any bits of paper could. Pens and pencils and the occasional forgotten teacup gather on top of his dresser, strewn about on ticket stubs and leaflets and receipts, but despite the apparent clutter everything has it’s place.

Mal’s room remains bare.

He’s not sure if he’s really supposed to go in Wolfe’s room. Nobody ever said, ‘Mal this is Forbidden,’ so at least he’d know he was breaking a rule, but Wolfe never said ‘Mal you may burst in here at all hours,’ either. As a compromise, when the door is closed Mal knocks and waits a few seconds before bursting in anyway. Wolfe knows how to use a bolt if he wants to.

One afternoon, Mal notices a picture frame on Wolfe’s dresser, with a little space cleared around it. Wolfe’s drawn a portrait of a smiling man and woman, strangely familiar.

“Who’s this?”

Wolfe looks up from his book and his spirit lowers it’s violin. “Ah,” he begins haltingly. “They… they are my parents. The best I remember them at least. I thought it would be nice to have something of them.”

On closer inspection, Mal realises the woman has Wolfe’s nose, the man his eyes. Did they have his aura? Eventually, he realises he should say something. “’S nice.” Not enough. “Yer Ma, she looks-” ‘Pretty,’ he’d been about to say, but that was stupid. “Kind,” he settles on instead.

Wolfe smiles, all happy-sad. “She was,” he says, and after a moment returns to his book.

A week later there’s a new picture next to the first. There’s a weird moment before Mal recognises himself, but he quickly places the scene. A few days before, they visited the park all together. Wolfe’s drawn him in the middle of telling Ben some wild story, hand’s spread wide. He’s grinning, which Mal doesn’t think he does much, and the white in his hair is longer than he thought, but it’s definitely him. Ben’s got one hand over his mouth, trying to be stern, but Mal remembers how he’d fought back scandalised laughter as he tried to deliver a scolding. Neither had noticed Wolfe sketching.

“You would like one?” Wolfe asks as he catches Mal staring.

Mal straightens, skipping back from the dresser. “Nah,” he replies quickly. “Jus’ lookin’.”

Even so, a few days later there’s a framed drawing of his own on his windowsill, the three of them walking in the woods.

 

“Where are you from?” People sometimes ask.

“Bugger off,” Jack usually replies.

But in his head there are different answers.

‘Ireland,’ because the accent’s close enough.

‘Widdershins,’ because that’s where Ma found him.

‘England,’ because he can’t remember how he got there in the first place.

‘The last town,’ because there was always a town behind him, and another one ahead.

‘Nowhere,’ and ‘Everywhere,’ and ‘Somewhere Else.’

 

The first night is strange. Mal follows Wolfe to his room without thinking, but at the threshold he’s given a cheery goodnight and the door is shut. Ben’s already in his room, no light spilling from under his door, and Mal makes his way back to ‘his’ room in the dark.

He strips to his vest, letting his clothes drop to the floor in a heap. The mattress springs creak under his (admittedly slight) weight as he tries to settle down, squirming on his stomach. For a few minutes he does his best to hold still - his head hurts like hell, he’s exhausted to his bones - but he’s unable to settle and gets up again.

Padding up the hall, he stares at Wolfe’s door through the gloom. He rests a hand on the doorknob - he wants very much to open it but his body won’t move. And a good thing too, because what would he even say? ‘Can I sleep wi’ ye t’night?’ like a scared child? Not a chance.

Instead, he wanders to the kitchen. Shadows cloak the unfamiliar corners of the room and leave the furniture misshapen blobs. Mal doesn’t touch anything, just stands there, hardly breathing. He’s not afraid of the dark - nothing can sneak up on him after all - but there’s a hollowed out feeling in his stomach. A clock ticks away, unseen, every second coming a tad too late, and Mal knows he is very, very small, in an impossibly large house, and he cannot move.

 

Ben gets a letter from his family and the specifics of what and why go over Mal’s head but the result is he’s going away for a few days.

“You’ll be able to manage without me, right?” he asks for the hundredth time as he’s fussing at the door, suitcase in hand. “If there are any malforms-”

“I’ll look after ‘em until ye send ‘em back,” Mal says. He’s got used to harbouring a couple in his room at a time anyway.

“We will be fine,” Wolfe promises, clapping Ben on the shoulder. “Have a nice time at home.”

Although Ben keeps a straight face, his emotions are playing up like they always do when family is mentioned. He doesn’t really talk about his family (Mal vaguely feels he has a sibling? Probably parents?) but whoever they are, Mal’s decided he doesn’t like them very much.

“Right. Yes,” he says stiffly. “Goodbye.”

Without him, the little house is much bigger, and much quieter. More like things used to be, and Mal’s surprised to find he’s not particularly glad of it, though some things are nice. He stays up late (later than usual anyway) talking in Wolfe’s room. Once, he falls asleep on the end of his bed and wakes in Wolfe’s arms as he’s carried back to his room. No jobs come in, but Wolfe goes out to busk so they’re not short on food.

A couple of days later they stand on the platform, waiting for Ben’s train to pull in.

“Don’t see why we’re here,” Mal says, pulling his scarf tighter. “Not like ‘e doesn’t know th’ way back. An’ now ‘appy thinks I abandoned ‘im.” They’d been in the middle of playing when Wolfe had insisted it was time to go.

“It is nice to welcome him home,” Wolfe says, firm but kind. “And Happy knows we are only getting Ben, I heard you tell him so.”

Stamping some warmth back into his feet, Mal considers pointing out Happy’s bad memory, but then Wolfe nudges him.

“Look, he is here already.”

In a cloud of stream the train screeches to a halt and people stream down onto the platform. Mal flinches as the first wave of crowd arrives, but squints past them all anyway.

Despite the bustle, Ben’s easy to spot as he emerges from the carriage - a big compressed ball of magical stress. He glances from side to side, his spirits sinking, before he takes the first step down.

“Oi, Ben!”

“Ben! Welcome back!”

At the sound of their voices, Ben raises his head, confused, and then he sees them. Mal thinks he might smile a little but it’s irrelevant compared to the unexpected rush of… _warmth,_ rippling out from Ben’s core.

It’s a little - overwhelming, let’s say, and Mal rubs the back of his neck as Ben approaches.

“I didn’t expect to see you two here,” he says, a hint of pleased in his voice but it’s the Ben equivalent of a running tackle hug. “Missed me that much? Or did you just burn the house down, and thought it better to warn me before I got there?”

Mal smirks. “Aye, nothin’ but cinders left.”

“I was afraid so.”

 

They’re all in the living one evening, warming up after a late buggerup called them out into the snow. Wolfe and Ben sit in the armchairs reading, while Mal switches between huddling right in front of the fire, and perching on the arms of their chairs.

He’d been hoping for a story, but Wolfe’s got something lovey-dovey, and Ben’s got a textbook so he doesn’t ask them to read out loud. Ben reads quickly, eyes zipping back and forth, quicker even than Wolfe. It’s kind of impressive, not that Mal would say, and even more so that once the words are in, they stay in. Making up stories himself stresses him, but there’s a book of Henry Barber stories he teaches Mal to read out of, and he can recite every part without looking. As he sits on the armrest, Mal tries to read a few words over his shoulder, but by the time he’s got them the page is already flipped. After a while he gives up and slumps onto the back of the chair, laying his head down. They’re just close enough to the fire to bask in the warmth without overheating and Mal yawns, stretching his back as best he can on his narrow seat.

“You’ll fall off if you sleep there,” Ben says mildly as he turns another page. It’s the closest he’s come to complaining about Mal’s location, which is a little odd now Mal thinks of it. For months now he’s unsuccessfully tried to break Mal’s habit of sitting anywhere but a proper chair, but everyone’s feeling calm and peaceful right now, it’s just that kind of evening, and -

Mal raises his head. No, it’s not ‘just that kind of evening.’ Now he’s thinking about it, the whole place is tinged calm, unnaturally so, he’d thought it was just Wolfe and Ben but the colour extends beyond them, seeping out from a bright glowing spot on the sideboard.

“Th’ hell is that?” he asks, getting to his feet.

Wolfe lowers his book. “Mal? Are you okay?”

“The candle there, ‘s all glowy!”

“You can see that?” Ben asks with mild interest. “You know, I’d almost forgotten, but it was a present from my family. They said it was infused with _Calm_ , but I thought it was their idea of a joke.”

“Aye, looks like _Calm_.” Mal watches the bright flame for a minute, wondering if that’s how candles look to normal people. “Coulda mebbe keep it?” he asks suddenly.

 

Infused candles are expensive, and Ben is nervous about making them, but Mal manages to save up enough for a little one of his own. He picks the prettiest, which turns out to be _Bittersweet_ \- a fancy name for happy-sad. Of course, burning it makes him feel more happy-sad, but that’s okay. There’s something nice about lying on his bed and letting happy-sad wash over him and bathe the room in colour.

 

For Wolfe’s birthday they go on a walk, all three of them, in some of the woods surrounding Widdershins. Dark leaves pile up on the ground to ankle height and Mal kicks up great arcs as he goes. Ben pulls a face and complains about the dirt, but kicks a pile himself when he thinks Mal’s not looking, while Wolfe watches them both, his violin-spirit soaring in the weak sunshine.

Neither Ben nor Wolfe want to play conkers - Ben because he thinks it’s childish and Wolfe because he always loses - but Mal pockets a couple of likely looking ones anyway. Even if they’re not used for a game, he still likes how smooth and shiny they are. The woods have good pickings, every couple of paces another catches his eye and though he tries to be casual about scooping them up, it’s kind of hard to hide.

“You are doing it again, _kleine Elster,_ ” Wolfe says with a laugh, as Mal stuffs another into his coat.

“What does that mean?” Ben asks, and Mal frowns. Mostly he’s resigned to Ben being one of them (and maybe a tiny little bit pleased) but there are still things that feel like just ‘him and Wolfe.’

Wolfe tilts his head to one side, squinting up at the trees. “It is, um. A kind of little bird? He reminds me of one, see, because he is black and white, and he always picks up pretty shiny things.”

“I don’t!”

Wolfe chuckles along with Ben, and Mal scowls deeper, cheeks hot, which only makes them laugh harder. Eventually, he can’t help smiling too.

 

Mal often breaks things. Rather, things often get broken around him, and Wolfe and Ben see that as the same. He doesn’t do it on purpose though, at least he doesn’t _think_ he does. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

Take the ink pot he drops, when he and Wolfe first arrive. He doesn’t pick it up thinking ‘I should smash this.’ But he is exhausted, and pissed off, and Ben’s already getting on his nerves, and he does kind of know that throwing around small, easily breakable objects isn’t a good idea, so when it does shatter on the floor it’s not a surprise. That’s different to _meaning_ to though, right?

Or sometimes, it really, honestly is an accident when he knocks a mug off the shelf or something, but he doesn’t move to catch it. Once he cuts himself because he sees the mug fall, he knows it will hit the ground, he knows it’ll break and he just watches until it smashes. He’s given a bit of slack for that one, because a shard slices his bare foot and not even Ben thinks he’d be stupid enough to break sharp things with no shoes on, but he’s still in trouble for not cleaning it up.

What really pisses Ben off is when his books and papers get dirty or torn, and never mind Mal saying it’s the buggerups. It’s not even really a lie, the buggerups are the ones who do the most damage. Mal just doesn’t mention they start because he’s moving Ben’s stuff around anyway, because he’s bored, or irritable, and the buggerups think it’s a fun game and get carried away. Or that he doesn’t always tell them to stop. Anyway, no matter what he says, Ben gets upset and shouts and Mal wonders if he’s finally had enough once and for all, and tries to decide if he’s glad or not.

So Mal doesn’t think he _tries_ to be destructive, he just doesn’t try as hard as he might not to be. He tries to explain to Wolfe once, during another ‘why we must respect Ben’s belongings’ talk, but he doesn’t think he does a very good job. Wolfe’s not angry, he rarely is, but he’s definitely disappointed, and worried about something too.

Mal decides to relay the talk to the buggerups, and starts to make a little bit more of an effort.

 

The conkers bask in the sun on Mal’s windowsill. Makes them better to play with, he tells the others, but soon they’re joined by hag stones (that’s what Ben says the special holey stones are called) and a glass paperweight Ben said he didn’t want but Mal suspects might be a present.

As the seasons change, Mal needs more suited clothes - not to mention it’s rare to escape a job clean and tidy. He fixes the wardrobe in no time (Ben immediately sets him to fixing other things around the house, which is exactly why he’d tried to keep that skill quiet) and hangs his new clothes inside.

They have a few good jobs in a row and Ben gives him some spending money, with a mumbled apology it’s not a real wage. It’s getting cold, so Mal buys a soft knitted blanket Wolfe says is light purple, whatever that means, and wears it around the house like a cape in the day, and curls under it at night.

More buggerups than just Happy gather in his room, so he lays out a bowl of water and a dish of crackers at the end of his bed. He’s not sure if they actually _need_ food and water, but they seem to appreciate it anyway.

Evenings are still best spent with Wolfe (and okay, _fine_ , Ben too, he supposes) but sometimes just sitting in his room with Happy or Sharpey or one of the others is nice too.

 

Wrath burns their house and they run. They keep running and fighting and it all goes wrong but they pull through somehow, except for Harry, and then it’s all over and with nowhere else to go they trudge home to a pile of smoldering timbers.

People are talking, Ben is arguing with someone as Wolfe tries to calm things down,  as worried as the rest of them, and Mal just stands there staring at the black mess.

Nothing but cinders left.

He realises he doesn’t have a clue how houses actually work. How do people get them? Who fixes them if they burn? Who even owns their house? He’d kind of assumed Ben does, but the council lady still made him and Wolfe live there, so maybe it’s actually her? She’s going to jail now, can you own a house in jail?

With nothing to contribute, he stays quiet and zones out, staring at what was home and wondering which ashes were his room. Maybe, in the midst of Wrath’s flames, there’d been a brief burst of happy-sad.

 

They never call it home, because that’s a silly thing to call a rickety cart stuffed with cleaning things that threatens to fall about at every rut in the road. But it’s where they sit for hours, telling stories and singing songs or just in peaceful silence. It’s where Jack sleeps when the nearest town is still far off in the night, and it’s where he hides when the spirits scare him, and it’s where he grows up even if the surroundings change.

 

Once they’ve got somewhere to live again, there’s a tiny bit of money left over, so Wolfe and Ben decide to buy some paint to liven it up.

“We are going soon, would you like to come with us?” Wolfe asks, pulling on his coat. “You can help us choose.”

Mal’s leaning against the wall, and his scowl deepens. “Aye, ‘cause I love lookin’ at different bits o’ grey. Feckin’ great idea.”

Ben huffs, his stupid protectiveness flaring, which pisses Mal off even more because a selfish little bit of him still labels Wolfe ‘Mine.’ “He’s just trying to involve you,” he says. “Unfortunately you have to live here too.”

“An’ who’s fault is that? Kick me out already then.”

“You might as well help make it homely,” Ben continues, pointedly pretending not to have heard, like he does every time Mal baits him like that.

“Waste o’ time. Won’t be th’ same.”

Ben and Wolfe exchange a look. They keep doing that lately and it makes Mal want to scream. He knows it’s about him, but he doesn’t talk faces like they do and their spirits aren’t talking either.

Eventually, Wolfe speaks. “Mal, we know you are upset about our home being gone, but -”

“No I’m not,” Mal says quickly, his fists bunched at his sides. “I told ye, I don’t care. Place was fallin’ t’ pieces anyway. Prob’ly good thing it’s all burnt. Now we don’t haveta live there an’ -”

“You did not hate home,” Wolfe says gently. “Do not say such things.”

“Ye don’t know tha’!” Mal pushes past, slamming the front door behind him, but it’s not the same because the sound’s different and the streets awaiting him aren’t ones he knows. He storms around them anyway, scowling at every building, determined they will never become familiar.

 

‘Home is where the heart is,’ well-intended, stupid people sometimes say.

This worries Jack a little. Mirrors suggest he doesn’t exactly have a heart, not in the way they mean. Then again, he doesn’t exactly have a home either.

Now he’s older, Mal figures they mean home is where your loved ones are, but that’s not right. Wolfe’s right here with him (and _alright_ , Ben too) in a new place, and it’s just a building. Just wood and stone and plaster.

Ben still tells him off when he flicks a cigarette butt on the floor. It’s hard to tell if he’s fussing or afraid.

 

Now they have more than one set of clothes and a tin bath, Wolfe doesn’t carry lavender anymore.

Sometimes, on the worst days (and when he’s certain he’s alone, which almost always coincide) Mal borrows one of Wolfe’s coats and curls up under it on his bed, but it’s not the same.

If he sleeps, he  dreams of open, empty, lonely roads.

 

“Present for you,” Ben says, setting the tin of paint on the table with a clunk.

Mal rolls his eyes. “Th’ walls’re already grey, what’s th’ point?”

“Just open it, please?” Wolfe asks. He places one hand on Mal’s shoulder, which isn’t fair, Mal would have done it _anyway_ , but now he _has_ to.

“Fine.” Mal digs his fingers in under the lid and pries it open, easier than expected. “Don’t see why -” Trailing off, he stares into the tin, then glances at Wolfe and Ben. “It’s… Uh, whassat called again? Ye told me, th’ one th’ flower was. Purple?”

Wolfe ripples with happiness, while Ben’s instantly in ‘understanding things’ mode. “Interesting. Do you like purple?”

“Y-yeah, guess so.”

With a grin, Wolfe claps Ben on the back. “It has worked! Well done!”

“What worked? What’re ye on about?”

“Ben asked the spirits to make paint you can see. To make your room nice.”

Mal draws the the tin in close. “Ye did? How? Why?”

“It was nothing really,” Ben says, looking down to straighten his waistcoat. For a few seconds he manages to restrain himself, before jumping into an explanation. “I imbued the paint we were going to use anyway with _Homesickness._ It should make the walls appear the colour you’ll like best.”

“An’ ye thought o’ this?”

“Well…”

“Mr Malik kindly helped us,” Wolfe says brightly, ignoring how Ben cringes. “He overheard us talking last time we went to the Anchor. It was Ben’s clever idea I tell it about Prussia to pay though, it worked very well.”

Ben goes a bit pleased-shy at that and Mal vaguely knows he’s supposed to make some joke here, less mean than he used to but _something_ to show he’s not a sap, but he can’t stop staring at the paint. It’s slowly shifting colours he realises, turning lighter and more blue, and he wonders if it’ll keep changing once it’s on the wall.

Suddenly, Mal thinks he understands the looks they keep sharing. “Ye were worried about me?” he exclaims, more surprised than he probably should be. Even the idea of Wolfe actually caring about him can be hard to understand sometimes, let alone Ben, but every time they do something kind it’s like a weird punch to the gut, not in the bad way, but it still leaves Mal stunned and reeling.

“Wolfe was,” Ben says, at the same time as Wolfe says, “Ben was.”

“Heh.” Gratitude rushes over Mal and the paint turns all sappy coloured. He slams the lid back on. “Uh, thanks,” he mutters, then clears his throat. “Both o’ ye. ‘S really, uh, purple.”

“That is Mal for ‘thank you very kindly, I like it very much, and you are very good friends to me,’” Wolfe solemnly informs Ben.

“I know.”

Mal snorts, but doesn’t correct them. They know they’re not wrong.

**Author's Note:**

> so that was a thing that happened... I hope the weird order was okay to keep track of, I spent ages moving it all around and some bits were meant to be vague but I think it gets there? I'll try clear up stuff if it's too unclear, I've been staring at this so long it's hard for me to judge lol.  
> I'm happy as always to hear what you guys think ^_^ but this one is pretty personal so I'll just say now yeah Mal does weird stuff at times, it's because people do when they're stressed. Anyway, hope you guys liked it <3
> 
> Oh yeah also I wrote this in Scrivener and I'm not great at formatting there, I think it's okay now but if anyone spots any problems please let me know!
> 
> ****
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, you might want to check out my others. I have fics in the [Supernatural,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=27) [ Osomatsu,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=7048385) [ Ace Attorney, ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=1034737) [ Haikyuu,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=758208) [ Portal, ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=83491) [ Boku No Hero Academia,](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=3828398) [The Umbrella Academy ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=29744003)and [Widdershins fandoms, ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/M3zzaTh3M3z/works?fandom_id=2511207) with more being added all the time.  
> [Find me @buggerup-busters on tumblr!](https://buggerup-busters.tumblr.com/)


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